'Curious scene this, is it not, Sam?' said Mr. Pickwick, lookinggood-humouredly round.

'Wery much so, Sir,' replied Sam. 'Wonders 'ull never cease,'added Sam, speaking to himself. 'I'm wery much mistaken if that,ere Jingle worn't a-doin somethin' in the water-cart way!'

The area formed by the wall in that part of the Fleet in whichMr. Pickwick stood was just wide enough to make a goodracket-court; one side being formed, of course, by the wall itself,and the other by that portion of the prison which looked (orrather would have looked, but for the wall) towards St. Paul'sCathedral. Sauntering or sitting about, in every possible attitudeof listless idleness, were a great number of debtors, the majorpart of whom were waiting in prison until their day of 'going up'before the Insolvent Court should arrive; while others had beenremanded for various terms, which they were idling away as theybest could. Some were shabby, some were smart, many dirty, afew clean; but there they all lounged, and loitered, and slunkabout with as little spirit or purpose as the beasts in a menagerie.

Lolling from the windows which commanded a view of thispromenade were a number of persons, some in noisy conversationwith their acquaintance below, others playing at ball with someadventurous throwers outside, others looking on at the racket-players, or watching the boys as they cried the game. Dirty,slipshod women passed and repassed, on their way to the cooking-house in one corner of the yard; children screamed, and fought,and played together, in another; the tumbling of the skittles, andthe shouts of the players, mingled perpetually with these and ahundred other sounds; and all was noise and tumult--save in alittle miserable shed a few yards off, where lay, all quiet andghastly, the body of the Chancery prisoner who had died thenight before, awaiting the mockery of an inquest. The body! It isthe lawyer's term for the restless, whirling mass of cares andanxieties, affections, hopes, and griefs, that make up the livingman. The law had his body; and there it lay, clothed in grave-clothes, an awful witness to its tender mercy.

'Would you like to see a whistling-shop, Sir?' inquired Job Trotter.

'What do you mean?' was Mr. Pickwick's counter inquiry.

'A vistlin' shop, Sir,' interposed Mr. Weller.

'What is that, Sam?--A bird-fancier's?' inquired Mr. Pickwick.

'Bless your heart, no, Sir,' replied Job; 'a whistling-shop, Sir, iswhere they sell spirits.' Mr. Job Trotter briefly explained here,that all persons, being prohibited under heavy penalties fromconveying spirits into debtors' prisons, and such commoditiesbeing highly prized by the ladies and gentlemen confined therein,it had occurred to some speculative turnkey to connive, forcertain lucrative considerations, at two or three prisoners retailingthe favourite article of gin, for their own profit and advantage.

'This plan, you see, Sir, has been gradually introduced into allthe prisons for debt,' said Mr. Trotter.

'And it has this wery great advantage,' said Sam, 'that theturnkeys takes wery good care to seize hold o' ev'rybody butthem as pays 'em, that attempts the willainy, and wen it gets inthe papers they're applauded for their wigilance; so it cuts twoways--frightens other people from the trade, and elewates theirown characters.'

'Exactly so, Mr. Weller,' observed Job.

'Well, but are these rooms never searched to ascertain whetherany spirits are concealed in them?' said Mr. Pickwick.

'Cert'nly they are, Sir,' replied Sam; 'but the turnkeys knowsbeforehand, and gives the word to the wistlers, and you maywistle for it wen you go to look.'

By this time, Job had tapped at a door, which was opened by agentleman with an uncombed head, who bolted it after themwhen they had walked in, and grinned; upon which Job grinned,and Sam also; whereupon Mr. Pickwick, thinking it might beexpected of him, kept on smiling to the end of the interview.

The gentleman with the uncombed head appeared quitesatisfied with this mute announcement of their business, and,producing a flat stone bottle, which might hold about a coupleof quarts, from beneath his bedstead, filled out three glasses ofgin, which Job Trotter and Sam disposed of in a mostworkmanlike manner.

'Any more?' said the whistling gentleman.

'No more,' replied Job Trotter.

Mr. Pickwick paid, the door was unbolted, and out they came;the uncombed gentleman bestowing a friendly nod upon Mr.Roker, who happened to be passing at the moment.

From this spot, Mr. Pickwick wandered along all the galleries,up and down all the staircases, and once again round the wholearea of the yard. The great body of the prison populationappeared to be Mivins, and Smangle, and the parson, and thebutcher, and the leg, over and over, and over again. There werethe same squalor, the same turmoil and noise, the same generalcharacteristics, in every corner; in the best and the worst alike.The whole place seemed restless and troubled; and the peoplewere crowding and flitting to and fro, like the shadows in anuneasy dream.

'I have seen enough,' said Mr. Pickwick, as he threw himselfinto a chair in his little apartment. 'My head aches with thesescenes, and my heart too. Henceforth I will be a prisoner in myown room.'

And Mr. Pickwick steadfastly adhered to this determination.For three long months he remained shut up, all day; onlystealing out at night to breathe the air, when the greater part of hisfellow-prisoners were in bed or carousing in their rooms. Hishealth was beginning to suffer from the closeness of the confinement,but neither the often-repeated entreaties of Perker and hisfriends, nor the still more frequently-repeated warnings andadmonitions of Mr. Samuel Weller, could induce him to alter onejot of his inflexible resolution.

CHAPTER XLVIRECORDS A TOUCHING ACT OF DELICATE FEELING, NOTUNMIXED WITH PLEASANTRY, ACHIEVED AND PERFORMEDBY Messrs. DODSON AND FOGG

It was within a week of the close of the month of July, that ahackney cabriolet, number unrecorded, was seen to proceed at arapid pace up Goswell Street; three people were squeezed intoit besides the driver, who sat in his own particular littledickey at the side; over the apron were hung two shawls, belongingto two small vixenish-looking ladies under the apron; betweenwhom, compressed into a very small compass, was stowed away, agentleman of heavy and subdued demeanour, who, whenever heventured to make an observation, was snapped up short by one ofthe vixenish ladies before-mentioned. Lastly, the two vixenishladies and the heavy gentleman were giving the driver contradictorydirections, all tending to the one point, that he should stop atMrs. Bardell's door; which the heavy gentleman, in directopposition to, and defiance of, the vixenish ladies, contendedwas a green door and not a yellow one.

'Stop at the house with a green door, driver,' said the heavygentleman.

'Oh! You perwerse creetur!' exclaimed one of the vixenishladies. 'Drive to the 'ouse with the yellow door, cabmin.'

Upon this the cabman, who in a sudden effort to pull up at thehouse with the green door, had pulled the horse up so high thathe nearly pulled him backward into the cabriolet, let the animal'sfore-legs down to the ground again, and paused.

'Now vere am I to pull up?' inquired the driver. 'Settle itamong yourselves. All I ask is, vere?'

Here the contest was renewed with increased violence; and thehorse being troubled with a fly on his nose, the cabman humanelyemployed his leisure in lashing him about on the head, on thecounter-irritation principle.

'Most wotes carries the day!' said one of the vixenish ladies atlength. 'The 'ouse with the yellow door, cabman.'

But after the cabriolet had dashed up, in splendid style, to thehouse with the yellow door, 'making,' as one of the vixenishladies triumphantly said, 'acterrally more noise than if one hadcome in one's own carriage,' and after the driver had dismountedto assist the ladies in getting out, the small round head of MasterThomas Bardell was thrust out of the one-pair window of ahouse with a red door, a few numbers off.

'Aggrawatin' thing!' said the vixenish lady last-mentioned,darting a withering glance at the heavy gentleman.

'My dear, it's not my fault,' said the gentleman.

'Don't talk to me, you creetur, don't,' retorted the lady. 'Thehouse with the red door, cabmin. Oh! If ever a woman wastroubled with a ruffinly creetur, that takes a pride and a pleasurein disgracing his wife on every possible occasion afore strangers,I am that woman!'

'You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Raddle,' said the otherlittle woman, who was no other than Mrs. Cluppins.'What have I been a-doing of?' asked Mr. Raddle.

'Don't talk to me, don't, you brute, for fear I should beperwoked to forgit my sect and strike you!' said Mrs. Raddle.

While this dialogue was going on, the driver was mostignominiously leading the horse, by the bridle, up to the housewith the red door, which Master Bardell had already opened.Here was a mean and low way of arriving at a friend's house!No dashing up, with all the fire and fury of the animal; nojumping down of the driver; no loud knocking at the door; noopening of the apron with a crash at the very last moment, forfear of the ladies sitting in a draught; and then the man handingthe shawls out, afterwards, as if he were a private coachman!The whole edge of the thing had been taken off--it was flatterthan walking.

'Well, Tommy,' said Mrs. Cluppins, 'how's your poor dear mother?'

'Oh, she's very well,' replied Master Bardell. 'She's in the frontparlour, all ready. I'm ready too, I am.' Here Master Bardell puthis hands in his pockets, and jumped off and on the bottom stepof the door.

'Is anybody else a-goin', Tommy?' said Mrs. Cluppins, arrangingher pelerine.

'Mrs. Sanders is going, she is,' replied Tommy; 'I'm going too,I am.'

'Drat the boy,' said little Mrs. Cluppins. 'He thinks of nobodybut himself. Here, Tommy, dear.'

'Well,' said Master Bardell.

'Who else is a-goin', lovey?' said Mrs. Cluppins, in aninsinuating manner.

'Oh! Mrs. Rogers is a-goin',' replied Master Bardell, openinghis eyes very wide as he delivered the intelligence.

'What? The lady as has taken the lodgings!' ejaculated Mrs. Cluppins.

Master Bardell put his hands deeper down into his pockets,and nodded exactly thirty-five times, to imply that it was thelady-lodger, and no other.

'Bless us!' said Mrs. Cluppins. 'It's quite a party!'

'Ah, if you knew what was in the cupboard, you'd say so,'replied Master Bardell.

'What is there, Tommy?' said Mrs. Cluppins coaxingly.'You'll tell ME, Tommy, I know.''No, I won't,' replied Master Bardell, shaking his head, andapplying himself to the bottom step again.

'Drat the child!' muttered Mrs. Cluppins. 'What a prowokin'little wretch it is! Come, Tommy, tell your dear Cluppy.'

'Mother said I wasn't to,' rejoined Master Bardell, 'I'm a-goin'to have some, I am.' Cheered by this prospect, the precocious boyapplied himself to his infantile treadmill, with increased vigour.

The above examination of a child of tender years took placewhile Mr. and Mrs. Raddle and the cab-driver were having analtercation concerning the fare, which, terminating at this pointin favour of the cabman, Mrs. Raddle came up tottering.

'Lauk, Mary Ann! what's the matter?' said Mrs. Cluppins.

'It's put me all over in such a tremble, Betsy,' replied Mrs.Raddle. 'Raddle ain't like a man; he leaves everythink to me.'

This was scarcely fair upon the unfortunate Mr. Raddle, whohad been thrust aside by his good lady in the commencement ofthe dispute, and peremptorily commanded to hold his tongue.He had no opportunity of defending himself, however, for Mrs.Raddle gave unequivocal signs of fainting; which, being perceivedfrom the parlour window, Mrs. Bardell, Mrs. Sanders, thelodger, and the lodger's servant, darted precipitately out, andconveyed her into the house, all talking at the same time, andgiving utterance to various expressions of pity and condolence,as if she were one of the most suffering mortals on earth. Beingconveyed into the front parlour, she was there deposited on asofa; and the lady from the first floor running up to the first floor,returned with a bottle of sal-volatile, which, holding Mrs. Raddletight round the neck, she applied in all womanly kindness andpity to her nose, until that lady with many plunges and struggleswas fain to declare herself decidedly better.

'Ah, poor thing!' said Mrs. Rogers, 'I know what her feelin'sis, too well.''Ah, poor thing! so do I,' said Mrs. Sanders; and then all theladies moaned in unison, and said they knew what it was, andthey pitied her from their hearts, they did. Even the lodger's littleservant, who was thirteen years old and three feet high, murmuredher sympathy.

'But what's been the matter?' said Mrs. Bardell.

'Ah, what has decomposed you, ma'am?' inquired Mrs. Rogers.

'I have been a good deal flurried,' replied Mrs. Raddle, in areproachful manner. Thereupon the ladies cast indignant glancesat Mr. Raddle.

'Why, the fact is,' said that unhappy gentleman, steppingforward, 'when we alighted at this door, a dispute arose with thedriver of the cabrioily--' A loud scream from his wife, at themention of this word, rendered all further explanation inaudible.

'You'd better leave us to bring her round, Raddle,' said Mrs.Cluppins. 'She'll never get better as long as you're here.'

All the ladies concurred in this opinion; so Mr. Raddle waspushed out of the room, and requested to give himself an airingin the back yard. Which he did for about a quarter of an hour,when Mrs. Bardell announced to him with a solemn face that hemight come in now, but that he must be very careful how hebehaved towards his wife. She knew he didn't mean to be unkind;but Mary Ann was very far from strong, and, if he didn't takecare, he might lose her when he least expected it, which would bea very dreadful reflection for him afterwards; and so on. All this,Mr. Raddle heard with great submission, and presently returnedto the parlour in a most lamb-like manner.

Title: The Pickwick Papers
Author: Charles Dickens
Viewed 262654 times

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